As something of an addendum to my discussion of comments threads and civility, I’d like to draw attention to a guest post from Jacques Chester at Catallaxy where he sets out some rules for enjoying a flame war. I like #5:
The fifth rule - is it funny? The very best flamewars are carried out by old sparring partners, fully embracing of mutual, passionate and long-standing hatred, who know the other’s arguments as well as their own. The best of them are prepared to mercilessly twist, skewer, lampoon, misrepresent, ridicule, satirise and generally dump on their opposition. Some of these arguments, notwithstanding your absence, can be absolute gold.
Pretty good set of rules there by Jacques. Flamewars can be good cobweb cleaners. Core part of the blogging experience in my book, if only to be indulged sparingly, as Jacques suggests.
Sort of like this one, which is still simmering away in the background over at my place.
Tim Blair and Tim Lambert are going at it. I think I will leave them to it.
Is
Isn’t
Is
Isn’t..
BTW - cultural snark wins over politics, unless there is an election. Entertainment v. education.
The third rule - know thy enemy. Flamewars, like world wars, are not really separate events. They are a single continuum of vapid disputation with occasional bouts of quiet. In any given thread, the heat will eventually dissipate and the thread will stop. In the bigger picture however, the argument merely awaits new fuel to start all over again.
That Rafean inquisition thread at Troppo took an awful long time to stop.
I’d agree with Jake ’s original points about how to conduct a good flamewar and cs’s (that tired old Labor hack) observation about how a good one can blow out the cobwebs.
I’ve been in the frontline of a few in my time - on BBSs and then Usenet forums - and I was proud to be a spear carrier in one of the all-time great blog flamewars, between D-Squared and Den Beste in late 2002.
We don’t see their like much anymore. A really good flamewar needs protagonists who are willing to think they are equally matched, really enjoy butting heads and yet utterly despise their opponent’s view. Yer lucky to score two out of three at most these days.
I mean around here, teasing Evil Pee is like pelting a senile rhino with orange peels and it’s hard to get into a real shitfight with Jack Strottchi, ‘cos after stumbling through his wet clothesline unmentionables you discover you both use the same clothes dryer after all. Norman Hanscombe‚Äôs been carried off in a butterfly net and the Jacque Chesters and Rafe Champions of this world are far too bloody reasonable and well informed for my taste.
WBB and I have squared off in a fitful attempt at raising the blogosphere temperature around this part of the woods but frankly our hearts aren’t in it.
Mark, if the best you can offer as spicy contra-flavouring here is Evil Pee (who frankly is not much more than Worcestershire Sauce - but without the ‘Worcestershire’ or the ‘Sauce’) this blog will end up as smug and self-congratulatory as Dunlop or Blair at her worst.
Flame on back, you fish-based enemy of the people.
if the best you can offer as spicy contra-flavouring here is Evil Pee
Maybe a Sophie Masson guest post on anarchism?
Talk about self-satisfied old-warrior puff-ball of sanctimonious I been there done that horseshit, Nabbers, if you don’t mind, from an old labour hack.
Has Tim Dunlop really temporarily relocated to Tim Blair’s joint or is this a po/mo joke by little t tim?
Sensational news Kim baby. Excuse me, while I go off and partake of serious email correspondence …
And to think I laughingly suggested it as an April Fool’s joke a couple of years ago.
No , I can’t point to the Surfdom link for my point above ‘cos Timlop’s site is like my bathroom right now with the plumbers in.
And cs, yes we can have a stab at a flamewar, but as wwb and I discovered, you can’t reall get yer dander up without some real mutual contempt around diametrically opposed and heartfelt views. Otherwise it just ends up hitting the same false note as bad sex education classes. “You see Timmie, when two bloggers really want to fight but their punching bags have run of sand…”